I’m just curious to know if just a few of us, or most of us, remain multiple distribution users even after installing a few to try them out?
I’ve been a multi-distro user since a few years after I started, so I have nearly 30 years of Linux experience, and between years 5 and 6, I developed strategies to run multiple distributions from one system. I’ve tried VMs, I’ve tried using multiple computers and I still have a few examples of each, but for me, simply having multiple distribution on my main systems is what I prefer.
Out of 5-6 systems, three of them are definitely full time multi-distro systems; the other ones are older test systems, which I don’t mind overwriting whenever I want to test something different.
We’ve talked about this a bit, but I was hoping to devote a specific topic to this, so those who want to do so can respond and those who aren’t interested don’t have to answer.
I don’t care if we go down a few “rabbit holes” here either, as long as it winds back around to why we prefer to run multiple systems from the same hardware. In my case, I feel virtual systems lag in comparison to direct installations, though the differences are not as great as they once were; the more powerful the hardware, the less it matters, yet to me I still feel the difference and I don’t run any systems with as much power as servers, who can run virtual machines without “blinking”!
I use VM’s to run multiple distros. Currently I have 4 VMs, Debian 13(Trixie), Kali, FreeBSD, and CentOS 10 (I think it’s actually called CentOS Stream, but I’ve been wrong before.). So I’m sort of a multidistro user, I just don’t boot into each of them through GRUB.
@MarshallJFlinkman I like the “combination” of using a real iron (directly bootable) solution and a QEMU-KWM (virtualization) solution. That makes a lot of sense, and that’s what I’ve done at times in the past when I really didn’t intend to KEEP various distributions or variations, but I wanted to at least “check them out”. It looks like that may be what you are doing too. Great combination!
Actually, I use virtualization for everything I can. I have three physical machines with QEMU-KVM:
SuperMicro X9SCM with Xeon E3 and 32 GiB RAM - This was my first purpose built QEMU-KVM server. Until recently, a virtual machine ran Windows 10 with AnyDVD HD and MakeMKV. That virtual machine was replaced with Linux Mint and MKV. This is the box where I read and write optical media. I like to isolate this because optical disc timeouts can cause some weird hangs.
SuperMicro X10SRA with Xeon E5 and 256 GiB RAM - This is my primary hypervisor used for my home ‘prod’ virtual machines, one per primary application:
Tor Relay (middle-node)
Tor client (general use, but separate into multiple instances for Stream Isolation)
Tor client (locked to US exit nodes) with Firefox (technically Arkenfox) for region specific Web sites
Privoxy (whitelisting for Windows 10; deprecated)
APT-Cacher-NG (caches all those “.deb” packages so that each one only has to be downloaded one time)
Pi-hole (DNS filtering)
pfSense Community Edition as the DNS server on my internal network (default drop egress filtering on the pfSense Plus firewall)
SuperMicro X10SRA with Xeon E5 and 256 GiB RAM - This is my secondary hypervisor used as my workstation and as a failover for the virtual machines on the X10SRA above.
I use virtualization for a combination of prod, testing, and troubleshooting.
One of the troubleshooting exercises was interesting. My ThinkPad T43 running Linux Mint (not LMDE at the time) failed to start the desktop environment following Update Manager. Reading syslog showed nothing useful for troubleshooting. I restored the most recent “duplicity” backup of the T43 into a QEMU-KVM virtual machine, verified that the restored operating system booted correctly, and took a QEMU snapshot. At this point, I could rapidly test various combinations of updates to determine which one broke the T43. I finally narrowed it down to a regression with LightDM, found a forum where folks recently described the issue and how to fix it. I tested the fix in the virtual machine, and then I applied the same fix on the T43, correcting the issue. The ability to instantly revert to QEMU snapshots and retest saved me days of tedious restores and troubleshooting.
I have been a virtualization fan since 2001 when I was introduced to VMware ESX Server at work.
I’ve tried several distros, but decided that LMDE is best for me because it is Mint, but without the Ubuntu components.
I check out Mint & LMDE in VM’s but I stick to LMDE on my main machine.
However, I always run a LMDE VM on my LMDE PC to practice any major upgrades for LMDE.
Probably this is excessively cautious.
On my end at daily I use Kali, Debian and Ubuntu in my home lab and beyond that remotely I manage mostly Ubuntu servers, Debian, CentOS, Almalinux, Cloudlinux and openSUSE.
On my end I have mostly Debian based systems on my hardware, with Arch based systems ranking next.
Specifically on my main system I have all physically installed instances of antiX 23.2, a multiple init test version of antiX 25, EndeavourOS, Slackware, and MX Linux.
On another system I also have antiX 23.2, Cachy OS, siduction, and a slightly different configuration of MX Linux.
I have Flash Drives that I use, some as regular backups and others as extra test images of a wide variety of other distributions. Puppy Linux is probably the most frequent removable image that I have on USB Flash Drive media other than the ones that I have mentioned.
I even have old CD and DVD images from the past.
I tried a few of them. Most are only usable on my oldest hardware that contains a CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive.
I am an absolute goober and have two distros on two different laptops, both of which I use for VMs (VMware) of other distros. I’m currently daily-driving my NixOS laptop and will switch back to my Gentoo box when I get around to feeling like it … I do not, however, multiboot any of my machines. Just NixOS on bare metal with VMs and Gentoo bare metal on a different laptop with VMs. Nix and Gentoo are really the only systems I want installed directly. If I get a third laptop with halfway decent hardware, I’ll install Arch.
My favorite is Gentoo. I installed it as a challenge to myself and I basically stayed for the USE flags and the ability to just twiddle every possible Linux knob using make.conf and various other config files (thank you so much, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=y" among other options, though this example isn’t a broad Linux option but an option specific to Portage). But I cheat and run the much-despised systemd, the same way I “cheat” on deadlifts and place my feet sumo stance.
NixOS, on the other hand, I installed as a challenge, not for my ability to run a command-line install (though I did, in fact, use the manual command-line installation procedure), but just to challenge my ability to use a complicated computer system. It still challenges me, particularly the part where I have to interpret error messages and the whole Nix language is sufficiently hard to wrap my head around to be incredibly fascinating. Once I got close to having the hang of it (I’m still not sure I have the hang of it genuinely), configuration.nix proved to be pretty convenient and handy, just whipping up a whole OS comprising all the features I tell it I want (declarative system).
I suppose the common denominator with these two systems is that they require me to problem-solve; to troubleshoot or implement a feature that requires more than just checking a box in a GUI. Command-line/text editor system configuration just feels more meaningful and more like I’m friends with my computer. Gentoo and NixOS ask me to use text-editor config more than most other systems would, which means they scratch that itch for me.
I just now fully read your post and realized that you specifically refer to multiboot systems, which I have run before. I haven’t for years, but I just realized that I have a 4 TiB NVMe drive in each of my laptops and I use btrfs, so I could probably use the LVM-ish features of btrfs to set aside a couple of partitions, each for the distro that I want, and use the rest for the data I want to store! That could be a hobby project for later
Long ago when I tried both Arch and Gentoo, I didn’t find either of them sufficiently better in any regard to justify the additional work to build and configure them. Now that Arch has several derivatives to simplify things considerably, I’ve found Endeavour OS and Cachy OS to be worthy competition to Debian-based systems, but unless there’s equivalent derivatives to simplify and speed up installation and configuration, I’ve not seen any compelling reason to return to Gentoo, but I am interested, if you or others have helpful suggestions.
As far as “problem solving”, I’ve done enough of that; these days I mostly read, then occasionally try out anything that rises and attracts attention; in the two above, I’ve actually kept them; otherwise I stick to the systems I’ve used for years, particularly now that I’m retired.
This is really, for me, part of the highlight of distros like Gentoo, Slackware, Arch, Void and Kali. The challenge is exactly what makes those distros enjoyable. They make us learn things; a bit more insight into how Linux works and finding our way through challenges is very rewarding.
That said, after surviving these type of distros, I enjoy more the comforts of the mainstream distros like Debian, Ubuntu, and soon CachyOS.
That makes sense. But after surviving the install phase of Gentoo … I just can’t bring myself to back out of all the mess I’ve managed to make lmao. I can’t stop custom-building my kernel and tailoring my packages with USE flags. It’s a compulsion at this point. I’m actually too comfortable where I am to go back to distros that require less manual operation. I can’t even bring myself to do binhost with my Gentoo installation. I’m compiling a colossal world update at this very moment.
@sarcutus I do not have any issue with you choosing Gentoo as you did, but in my post I explained the reasons why I didn’t go with either Gentoo or Arch - neither of them delivered “for me” what I was looking for. Given that Gentoo DID deliver “for you” what you prefer, that is precisely why we have so many choices, including freely available software in hundreds of variations, some cosmetic, others with fundamental packaging and building choices. Then there are those who are not geeks and can’t be bothered with any of the stuff all of us like and they are willing to pay for commercial hardware and software to get what suits them best.
So while I’m NOT a consumer of commercial software, I am a big advocate of choice, including the choice of distribution and the choice of free or commercial.
Your choice indicates that you like building things your way, so this is an excellent explanation and I applaud you for explaining to us why you “go your own way” - (there’s a song in there somewhere)!
Oh for sure, the whole Build-A-Bear Linux (now there would be a name for a distro ) concept behind Arch, Gentoo, et C. is emphatically not for every user of Linux. I’m trying to get my mother to switch from Microsoft (because of Copilot) and I want her to use Mint because it’s so incredibly user friendly and absolutely perfect for someone coming fresh from Windows. The Cinnamon desktop will charm her. Debian and Ubuntu are the go-to distros for people who just want to make sure the job gets done and done well (at least, that’s what I tend to read from users of Debian and Ubuntu). Gentoo is for the absolute goobers like myself who … well, honestly I’m just pretty weird lol.
A Fleetwood Mac fan, then? That song is definitely a banger, and a classic. Thank you for reminding me of it
What TRUE software person doesn’t have at least a little bit of weird in them? When I was a software engineer at Digital, we had a review meeting in February on a cold winter day, and we decided to make the theme “Summer at the Beach”. Only two people in the group brought Summer Beach apparel and both of us graduated from Michigan Tech in the far western Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where they AVERAGE 220" of snow in the Winter (the year I graduated we were well over 100" ABOVE the average with 355-400" in our region. We also had a record low temperature one otherwise beautiful Sunday - MINUS 38 degrees! That was NOT the cold spot in the nation though; Duluth, Minnesota was -45 degrees and somewhere in the Dakotas was also super cold!
Only geeks like me remember both software and weather conditions; that’s because we had near tundra conditions in our Lake Superior “cold” lake effect weather!
For my main full time desktop I use MX Linux 23 KDE. In the past that role had been filled by ubuntu, kubuntu, ubuntu-mate.
I have a Proxmox cluster running VMs for important services, and for experimentation. Mostly Debian, some RHEL.
I also have a couple of FreeBSD machines, also running VMs.
I’ve been looking at different distros for my next desktop update - Fedora, OpenMandriva, Straight Debian, MX 25, Omarchy, OpenBSD, and finally Cachyos, which turned out to be the absolute best platform for running the sort of 3D FPS games I like.
So on the desktop, I tend to stay with a distro, until I find something that’s a big improvement. On the server side, I’ll try everything to see what delivers the performance and reliability.
